HOPE, British Columbia - Police said Monday they have indentified and are investigating a woman who allegedly helped a former reality television show contestant hide from authorities in his native Canada after his ex-wife was found dead in the U.S.

Sgt. Duncan Pound of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not release the identity of the woman who checked Ryan Jenkins into a remote motel in British Columbia days before he was found dead there Sunday of an apparent suicide.

Pound said the two had a history together and that police were investigating whether she would face charges for helping Jenkins. She is not in police custody, he said.

Jenkins, a contestant on VH1's 'Megan Wants a Millionaire,' was accused of killing his ex-wife, a model whose body was so badly mutilated when found in a trash bin outside Los Angeles it had to be identified by her breast implants' serial numbers. He evaded a massive international manhunt for days as he crossed from the United States into his native Canada.

Police in California have still not located the crime scene and said Monday they believe the victim's missing white Mercedes-Benz could be the key.

Jenkins' dramatic end came at an isolated motel at the edge of British Columbia's mountainous interior, on the outskirts of Hope, a town with limited claims to fame as the place where the first Rambo movie was filmed and where residents make giant wooden carvings with chainsaws.

On Sunday evening, police responded to a call from motel staff about a dead person, and then called investigators who were part of the manhunt for Jenkins, said Pound, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's border integrity unit.

The manager of The Thunderbird Motel and his nephew said they found Jenkins hanging from the bar of a coat rack by a belt. They said a young woman had checked him in to the two-story inn surrounded by trees.

The 32-year-old real estate developer and investor was charged in California with first-degree murder Thursday after the dismembered body of Jasmine Fiore was found in a trash bin in Buena Park, about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Fiore's teeth had been pulled out and her fingers cut off, apparently to impede her identification. Investigators used the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her, Orange County prosecutors said.

Buena Park police Sgt. William Kohanek said Monday that Fiore's missing car, a white 2007 Mercedes-Benz CL S550, is part of a 'big unsolved puzzle' as they try to determine where she was killed.

Fiore's mother, Lisa Lepore, said Monday that she had a mixed reaction to news of Jenkins' death.

'It brings some closure to what's been going on,' Lepore, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, said on NBC's 'Today' show. 'We don't have to worry about looking for him anymore or being worried that he is a threat to any other women or men.'